Events & Workshops

First Draft: Conversations on Writing is an online talk series that dives into themes that affect our writing lives. Writing helps us to understand things and to communicate these findings to our audience, even if our audience is ourselves. Sometimes we are driven by these themes, other times they’re the things that hold us back – what we learn through the process can be revolutionary. The quest to be understood unifies all writers.

 

This event will be recorded and made available on the SWG YouTube channel following the event: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRAIIcrpQW0NcY6ZM0GGSzw

 

This event features a 15-minute talk presented by Alasdair Rees around the theme of energy. Following the talk is an interview conversation to dig deeper into the theme, hosted and moderated by Neil Aitken.

 

Participants are welcome to submit questions in advance of the event to swgevents@skwriter.com.

 

To register: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XZmTuLwORIqQvzG10cYDTg

 

Thinking about Energy in Poetry

 

Through what energetic circuit does a poem connect with us? Do words hold a charge like batteries, or are they more like sparking wires? How are the letters on a page metabolized? Why do some phrases have so much gravity?

 

Let’s consider the human-poem relationship by looking at the transference, transformation, and generation of energy that result from the acts of reading and writing. We’ll talk about specific manifestations of energy in poetics, sustaining a connection to creative power, and reading as a means of practicing conductivity.      

 

Presenter

Alasdair Rees lives and works on Treaty 6 territory in Saskatoon where he teaches French at the University of Saskatchewan. He was Saskatchewan's first Youth Poet Laureate and is a former associate editor of Grain magazine. His work was longlisted for the 2020 Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize and has been published by Moeubius, GUTS magazine, Urbania, and Metatron Press. His first book, Mon écologie, comes out in June 2021. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Host and Interviewer

Neil Aitken is the author of two books of poetry, Babbage’s Dream (Sundress 2017) and The Lost Country of Sight (Anhinga 2008), winner of the Philip Levine Prize. His poems have appeared in The Adroit Journal, American Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, and many other journals and anthologies. After completing an MFA and PhD in the US, he recently returned to Regina where he works as a creative writing coach and edits Boxcar Poetry Review.

 

 

 

 

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